A Swell-Looking Book Used & Rare Books - Book Selling

Adventures of a Book Dealer
Among the Savages

A Collection of Humorous (and Perhaps Some Not-So)
Anecdotes on Book Selling, Collecting,
Bibliophily, Bibliogony, and More

                 How Did I Get Myself Into This?

Firstly, I suppose, a little bit about myself, and how I got into this
(sordid) business. Some folks are under the delusion that book dealers
are in the business to make money. Some people seem to think we're
making gobs of money - for more on such a story see the anecdote
below, named "Those Dealer Scum." Nothing could be further from the
truth. There may be some dealers just in it for money - why, by God they
chose to sell books is anybody's guess - I can think of about 10,000
other, more lucrative ways to earn a living. But there are those dealers
out there. There are even some who are making money doing this. The
rest of us do actually like, even love, books. Many of us are big readers,
as well as collectors, and have decided, hell, if I can make a little money
working with what I love - well isn't that what Dr. Phil and Oprah are
always telling us we should do? Consequently, most book dealers are
notoriously poor business persons.

At any rate, I am dealer who falls in with that second batch of people.
Since childhood, I've always been a big reader. As a teen, I read tons of
science fiction. In college, I switched to serious literature. I have a wide
variety of interests - many in the sciences. I have my BS in Computer
Engineering, actually, not English Lit as you might expect of a book
person. Like many book lovers, I entertained thoughts of writing for a
living. I have written poetry, short fiction, etc. Never been published -
save one poem in a small literary journal. I never really was a collector,
per se, until much later.

College, marriage, work as a software developer, life basically - all
intervened. The collecting bug hit - I'll relate that story elsewhere and
some other time. I already had lots of books and started to discover what
some were worth. Like a lot of people new to books - I was aghast at the
prices things could fetch. I began hunting books. Thrift stores, rummage
sales, garage sales, estate sales, library sales, whatever. I started out
only buying books I wanted. I eventually was buying anything I thought
was worth money. I have good instincts when it comes to buying books.
Before I had much knowledge, I had the good instincts. I found some
nice stuff. For a few years I just acquired.

A few thousand books and a rec-room-full-of-laser-printer-paper-boxes
later, I decided it was time to start selling. I should digress here, to note,
that it was partly a friend of mine was influential in this. I would find a
book, tell him, hey this book's listed in so-and-so's guide for $1,000. He'd
say, "Yeah, but how much would somebody really pay for it?" His
cynicism and my gumption to prove him wrong encouraged me to answer
the question. It turns out, people were willing to pay, for the right stuff.
My friend is a collector himself - cameras, electronics, sound equipment
mostly. Before most people had ever heard of it, he was using ebay. So,
again, this friend was instrumental in getting me started selling, by
introducing me to this method. Aside to my wife: "Yes dear, now you
know whom to blame!"

                                I Sell My First Book

I sold my first book on ebay in July of 1998. It was a 1st edition of
Ellison's Invisible Man, without a dust jacket, and it sold for $75.00. Wow,
I thought, this is easy. This book came from what would have been a nice
collection of modern firsts, that I found at a garage sale in Glenview, IL.
I say would have been, because had the home owner's decorator back in
1950 not told the owner to throw out all those gaudy dust jackets, that
the books look much better on the shelf in their cloth covers - the
collection would have been worth a few thousand. C'est la vie.

For the first two years I sold online, on the now-defunct bibliofind.com
and at ebay. I also did two shows each year - the Midwest Bookhunters
fairs. More about book fairs later. My wife and I had a son in 1999 -
you'd think that would have put some sense in my head - but in 2000, I
actually decided to get deeper into this mess, by opening a store in the
town where I live. Park Ridge is an upper-middle-class, mostly
Republican, bedroom community just northwest of Chicago. I might not
always agree with the town's and townsperson's politics, but it is a nice
place to live and to raise a kid. Ironically, it is Hillary Clinton's home
town - the house where she grew up is a few blocks away from our store.
And when she becomes President someday, maybe we'll finally get some
good foot traffic. More about Park Ridge later.

    Soon, You'll Have a Whole New View of Humanity

This is what another dealer told me at a book show, when he found out
that I was opening a shop. Now, book dealers of the used and rare sort,
are a notoriously cranky and crabby lot. This is a stereotype, true - that it
is a, nevertheless, accurate stereotype is also true. First of all, it's an
understandable consequence of the sort of person attracted to the
business: as noted above, book lovers - people passionate about books -
(quiet, introspective, introverted, nerdy, you might say) who have
deluded themselves into thinking they can make a living doing this. And
the ones with such a delusion are typically male - so you see where this
leads.

Secondly, combine the above person with the sort of person attracted to,
and inclined to shop in a used and rare book store, in addition to the
average yokel who comes in off the street to see if you have something
that would look good on his new bookcase, and you have a volatile
mixture. I have another book seller acquaintance who had to close his
shop - he still keeps the building for storage for his online business -
because he was becoming so filled with loathing for his customers, it was
poisoning his mind.

Now, I can understand where these guys are coming from, but I'm not a
complete misanthrope, yet. The following stories will give you a little
glimpse into that wonderful and rarefied world of the used and rare book
business.

         I Can't Recommend Doing This, to Anyone

At the time I opened the shop, a lot of other book stores were closing.
Why keep a store when you're making more money on the internet and
NOT having to deal with pesky customers in person? Whenever a
glassy-eyed customer comes in, talking about what a great business this
must be, and how wonderful it must be to be around old books all day, I
am apt to give them the above quote (which someone told me once, when
I was the glassy-eyed, swooning bibliophile).

Well . . . one of the main reasons I opened the shop was to have another
avenue of acquiring books from walk ins. Some dealers will tell you, it's
the only reason to open a store. Let's face it, people are more apt to
bring their stuff to, and to trust, someone who's gone through the effort
of hanging out his or her shingle. Of course, many of the books that
come through the door are somewhat less than desirable, but there are
those occasions that make it worthwhile. It also happens that the books
(and folks) coming in the door supply me with some of the best
book-selling anecdotes.